Sunday, April 27, 2014

Very Merry Unbirthday Part 1

I haven’t done a large scale painting for quite some time
and I’ve been itching to do one. I toyed around with the idea of doing one
based on a drawing I did based on Plan 9 From Outer Space, but I abandoned that
plan. I’ve noticed than any artwork I do based on Disney properties gets a lot more
attention than anything else I do, so I decided to do something from Alice in Wonderland.

I watched the movie again and grabbed a bunch of screen caps
as I went to decide what scene I wanted to paint. I decided on the Tea Party
scene because there was a lot of great color and I liked the look of the
characters. I liked the part where the Hatter and the Hare are hitting the high
note in their song and the glasses are clanging together and tea is flying everywhere.
One of the screen caps I grabbed was a shot looking down the table through all
the weird looking tea pots at the main characters, I thought with a few changes
this would make a good painting.

For my first rough sketch I changed a few things around. I
moved up a lot closer to the characters so they would be more prominent in the
final piece. I also changed the chairs the two of them were sitting in to ones
that Alice was sitting in earlier. I just thought they were more interesting
looking chairs. I also added a couple of lanterns and more defined shrubbery to
the background.

I then went and did a much more detailed sketch of the
scene. I added the stack of tea cups beside the Mad Hatter and moved the teapot
with the mouse in it to the foreground.

The next step is pretty simple. I scan the line work and
then use photoshop to block out all the flat colors.

Once the flats are laid you can go in and start to shade the
piece. I added some glow to the lanterns, I like how it looks here but I’m not
sure if I will be able to reproduce the effect with a paintbrush. One of these
days I should look into getting an airbrush. I like how the sky turned out.

The next step is to re-sketch out the line art onto a
canvas.The canvas I picked up is 16 x
20. So I resized the artwork to 1600 x 2000 pixels in photoshop and got out my
ruler and made a connect the dots version of the image on the canvas. I’m sure
there are easier ways to do this, I’ve heard some people project the image onto
the canvas and trace it. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to do the same.

This is the end of part one. Once I get some more work done
on the painting I’ll put up another post.